The Church of What's Happening Now: The New Testament - A good story never dies with T.J. English

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Author T.J. English (The Corporation) joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt for one of the best episodes we have had on the east coast. They talk about Jazz and it's surprising connection to organized crime, the worst meal Joey has had in years, why we were lied to about hard drugs and much more! T.J.'s new book, "The Last Kilo" is available everywhere, now! Support the show & try your first month of BlueChew for free, just pay $5 for shipping. Press in code JOEY at ⁠https://www.bluechew.com ⁠ Support the show and download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and press in code JOEY. New customers can bet $5 to get $200 in bonus bets instantly. \

Sunday, we just went, and it was the worst meal ever, that fucking P.F. Chang's yesterday. How do you even end up at P.F. Chang's? I go to P.F. Chang's once a month. I get the Setschuan beef. Are we on yet? Yeah, we're recording. We don't have to be, but... No, fuck it. Let's go from here. We get the Setschuan beef. I get the hot and sour soup, and you're safe. The rice. You're always fucking safe. Always safe with that. They got the little noodles. You know, always safe with that. Yesterday, I had to go to more. I had the girls with me, everybody's hungry all of a sudden.

We're fucking hungry. We just ate bread. We're hungry. All right. Let's go to P.F. Chang. Let's go to P.F. Chang's. I go in there. They got the Oolong Sea Bass.

They've had the Oolong Sea Bass for 30 fucking years, but they took it off the fucking menu. When I went in there, the only reason why I went to P.F. Chang is I agreed is because they got fried chicken now. They do? And since I got no fried chicken in New Jersey, at least this kills the whatever. It's not the best fried chicken, but it ain't bad either. So I go in there, they got no-fried chicken, and they got the Ulung fucking sea bass, which they haven't had for fucking two years.

So I go, you know what, let me live off a little bit off the box. Let me get the Ulong, whatever the fuck it was. I got the house salad, and that was it. The house salad, they poured like 2,000 gallons of that Asian dressing on. I got an headache. Give you a headache. And the fucking Ulong, I don't know who cooked it. It wasn't no Ulong.

It was fucking deep fried or some shit. Dude, I have to be, you have to admit, if I was coming in here with, I went to P.F. Chang's and got fish, you would have a 45-minute rant. I've been getting fish at P.F. Chang's for 10 years. You live in New Jersey and, what about Freddie? What happened to Freddie? Hold on the road. When I go on the road to Columbus, there's certain towns, I can tell exactly what the cities are.

I go to P.F. Chang, close to the hotel, and they always got the fish in the salad. Can't go wrong with the fish in the salad. out. Cannot go wrong? You know, people get the fucking mocky-mocky shrimp and the fire. I don't like none of that shit. I don't like none of that firecracket shrimp. Oh, that's good. I like that. Yeah, yeah, that's right, because you're fucking ten.

You know, you're going there with a little hat. I don't know you eat sushi at fucking people. No, I don't need to. How dare you put that on my record? They got three roles. I have an unblemished record of P.O.T. They got three rolls. What a coincidence. They're all prepackaged and you're in there. Oh, I'm mean an Asian. You know, but the fish ain't bad.

That's my point. First of all, was 44 bucks. Damn. They raised it. The fucking salt and pepper prawns were 31, and they were greasyy and fuck. I tasted one. I had to spit it out.

I went home, both of us. Me and my wife were shitting blood all over there. Everybody was shit. The only one is my Billy Goat daughter. No, but she had the beef and broccoli. She was saved. He was fucking safe. Right.

So how did you end up there instead of going to Freddy or like a regular Chinese place. Because I was in freehold at the fucking mall. Do you not understand me? Yeah, but if I had that excuse, you would be ripping me a new asshole right now. Because you did it because a girl told you to go there. Your girl told you to go there.

I did it because the boss and my fucking daughter, my wife told me to go there. Oh, your daughter's the boss? Yeah. You ever sit with that miserable fuck at a restaurant? Your daughter? If she don't like it, it's fucking misery. She looks on a phone.

She looks around the restaurant, retort. I can't. I can't. So I got to take her somewhere where she fucking enjoys the food and she's going to be, there was a Yankee game on, you know, we're watching that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, I got stuck with her. Listen, I had the week from hell last week. Okay. But not really. This is the shit I live for. On paper, it sounds shitty. I went to my daughter's middle school game. I get there and the bus from our school is there. And the girls from what school is there, but I don't see the other team. We're waiting.

And this is the home team. It's the fucking home team. I'm like, where's this fucking home team, man? So I'm sitting in my car and watching them warm up, and all of a sudden I see the principal of school run out from the school were playing at. And she's like, game's been canceled. Our team went over to Marlborough, and you guys came here, so forget it.

So it's 3.30 in the afternoon. So all these kids are scrambling. they're on their phone calling their parents. Like three of these fucking kids, their parents work like 6 o'clock at night. Yeah. So my daughter comes over, she calls me, and she goes, Dad, no game.

I can fucking tell that, alright? I can see, you guys are walking over here now. So she goes, and what's her name's parents? Don't get out till five. Do you mind? I go, bring her with you. And then she called back. She goes, the Jewish girl's parents,

don't get out till five. I go, bring her with you, too, because I like her. I like both those girls. So they got in the car. That was the longest 30 minutes in my life. Three 12-year-old girls do not shut the fuck up. And they were talking to you?

No, they don't want to talk to an old fucking man for. They had some fucking music on and fucking jamming and yelling and talking about the school and this. Then I go, I asked them the question of life. You want to crack three little girls? What do you ladies want to eat? Oh, it's like I fucking pulled the fucking plug and threw a fucking grenade back there.

I don't like this. I don't like that. I don't like this. There's one girl that her legs, I like this. Her little waist is like this. I will put the picture up. You got to see how she eats meat and hamburgers. She weighs 10 pounds.

Her mother tells me all the time. She goes, we had to leave here and take her for a fucking steak last week. She ate everything. She cleaned off the steak and she didn't give a fuck. She'll go anywhere, that girl. Is she the Jewish one? No, the Jewish one was the one.

I'm like, how about Chinese food? I don't know. You're a fucking Jew? You know what I'm saying? Oh, my God. Especially in some pass over. I'm like, Jewish, you want Chinese food? She's like, I don't know.

I'll find something. I'm like, God damn it. So I took them for pizza. Okay. Fancy fucking restaurant. And they were in love. They all got their little sodas with the cherries in it and shit. Oh, the Shirley Temples?

Yeah, they were all like... That was the best when you were like a kid? Let me say something. Those girls devoured. tape my wife got it my daughter got a chicken paw and it was the size of my head the other girl got a whole fucking pizza and the other girl got the half pound cheeseburger with the fries gone I didn't eat dick because I had the stitches in my mouth I had to sit there and just watch no wonder they like going out to you with you nah I had them for like

an hour and a half it was the shit they were talking about is fucking amazing that the shit that they were talking about in that car, who's dating who? At 12? Oh, yeah, they don't even kiss. They just walk around. Like, yeah, they were dating, but they never talked at school.

Oh, yeah. What are you talking about? You know what I'm saying? That's when you're dating and you hold hands, you're like you break up the same day. Yeah, yeah, they don't like that shit. Then my daughter told the story about when she was six, she had a boyfriend for about two weeks,

but the kid kept getting in trouble. A Russian kid named the Keita, and she dumped him in that day. he slipped and cut his hand he got stitches in school my daughter's like I felt so bad I just dumped him I'm like what the fuck

you're talking about I don't even remember Nikita he was a big fucking kid for eight years old What does it feel like to you Like you know To hear your daughter talking about Like dating

And like she's like fucking I think my daughter's gonna be a lesbian I don't know She likes softball You know And she's like I don't know Those kids are goofy One day she told me

She goes those kids in my class they come in thinking that they got a big dick dad, but she goes, at the end of the day, I got a bigger dick. And I just looked at it. I'm like, okay, if that's how you want it. Jesus. I can't wait until she's like 16, just going crazy. Like, what were you like at 12?

Do you think about that now when you look at that, when you look at her? Yeah. And it's two different worlds. Were you dating back then? Well, I was starting to fall in love with this girl I dry hump. That's it. Oh, then New Yorker?

Mm-hmm. We dry humped, we walked home together, we danced at the school dances. I mean, that was it. There was no... I mean, in my mind, there was sexual shit because I was raising that shit. Right. I got Cuban uncles who asked you at five. You got your dick suck?

You got your dick suck. You're like, ah, you start crying. You don't know what the fuck they're talking about. But that's what they ask you if you're piss sweet, you know, creepy fucking Cuban uncles, all of them would be in prison time. Right. Because the shit they say to you growing up as you were a fucking... young man so do you fuck with i mean obviously not like in the sexual way but like do you fuck with

these kids at all no no no wow because they're young women and i don't want them to take some room and go to their homes and then say something that that makes sense i said something so i don't discuss anything in front of them i talk some shit in front of my daughter she's my fucking daughter but these yellow young girls no if they get in the car and they get to come i'll tell them lighten up on the fucking conversation. And they don't think that way, guys. Trust me what I'm telling you that I'm around these kids.

I see them like the little boys. They're 12 still. When I was 12, I was starting to bang it out. I was sniffing my aunt's bras. I was doing creepy shit. These guys probably are, but they're reserved. They wear slippers with socks on. These fucking kids, they don't even have coming that nuts.

They're so weak. I mean, they did a test. A men don't even have to. testosterone. Grown men have the lowest testosterone rates of all time with the egg whites and the faggotry and the fuck and the phone and the fucking you know there's no cum left you think these 12 year olds are going to have cum in their little nutsacks they don't eat like us they don't eat you know when we were growing up you ate with your mother cooked fucking pasta steak black beans these fucking kids got every single option and there's every single chemical in their fucking food right from Cheerios to

fucking, you know, everything. They don't even have sperm. They have nothing. They have fucking nothing, these little facts. Jesus Christ. Do you think it's going that way? Because, like, I would have thought it's going to be. I'm just telling you what I read.

What articles are you reading when they're talking about 12-year-old people? I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about kids. But what I'm saying is it's a fucking crisis right now that they've tested men 25 to 34 and testosterone levels across the board. That's why you see these guys with their brown shoes and the blue suits and they tighten up. They look like fucking faggots. They look like fucking faggots. But it's accepted now.

Look at men today. They don't look like men no more. They don't look like James Coburn. They don't look like fucking Salazzo. What was that guy's name? They don't look like that. They don't look like that. And then again, you look at women.

If you guys are watching this, if you're young, dig up Playboy magazine on Google. Look at what tits looked like in the 70s. They were thicker and the fucking circle in the middle was gigantic. Whatever that fucking thing. Aeriala. The ariola was huge. Titties from the 70s and titties from the 2000s are two complete different fucking tithes. I never thought about.

What do you think happened to the titties? Everything changed. We're going to put more shit in their bodies just like fucking mended. So I know for a fact right now, if you look up the fucking charts, testosterone is down in young men. so it's got to be down in young kids. It didn't even reach. It doesn't even fucking reach. And that has to do with playing.

Guys, when you're on a fucking computer and you're running, that's testosterone in your fucking legs, walking upstairs, walking up the field with your fucking football uniform on. That's what builds testosterone at our age. At my age, if I sit there and watch TV, there's nothing in your dick. You try to jerk off, it won't get hard.

And if you do get it hard for a minute and a half, dust comes out of it. That's proven. You got to stick up with your fucking protein, and you got to fucking do stuff from here down. You got to do stuff from here down. That's your sperm. That's your fucking growth hormone. Then you got a supplement with that shit that's big now. The fucking tit milk.

Breast milk? Yeah. You get it in powder. Really? What's the first shot of tit milk that comes out? They call it liquor gold. What's that shit called? I've never heard of it.

Yeah. When the baby comes out of the fucking womb and the doctor gives it back to the mom, that first blast, the tit milk, colostrum. It's called colostrum, and it comes in fucking packages now. And you've got to put two or three fucking dips in your milk every day or whatever. And watch what happens to your dick. Watch what happens to your hair. I started taking a year ago.

I got no hair on my head, but everywhere else, I'm a wolfman. I got hair everywhere. Oh, my God. My wife had to shave my ear The other day Yeah I got hair everywhere else On my legs

My fucking behind my kneecaps It grows hair cholesterol Not where you need it Oh I didn't do Because you've been like hairless Like I've seen more of you Like I've never seen hair on any part of you That's what I'm saying

Fuck That's what I'm saying So I don't even know how we got on this conversation I have no idea With testosterone And then I had the best day of my life The other day when I went to the fucking dent I went to a dentist that's high end computers, 3D imagery.

Okay. This is wild. I mean, you get raped up to fucking ass. But you go to these old guys and they're still working like 1970. You know, you can't fucking do it. So I went to this guy just to check them out. Oh my God, they print it up on the thing. They show your teeth.

They got a DJ behind you. It's fucking amazing. So I go in there, the guy's like, I got to rip two teeth out. I got to take medication the night before. I go in there. In 10 in the morning, I put the iPod, whatever the fuck, your earphones on. And guys, he started popping needles in my mouth. I felt the first three.

And after I didn't feel anything. And at the end, I go, did you pull your teeth out yet? He goes, I did that in the beginning. I didn't feel two teeth. And they had 60-year-old Cuban teeth, pre-revolutionary teeth. You know what I'm saying? When there was fucking real tit-milk and Russians in Cuba. You're not lying.

You open everything with your teeth. I've seen you open, like, fucking, like, metal with your teeth. I got Cuban teeth, dog. I seen him going like this for a minute, but I don't know what the fuck. And this was your best day? What? This was a good day for you? It was good because I lived it.

I thought I was going to faint eight times, but I didn't. The only thing that bothered me was the stitches, the cotton that hung on my mouth. Every time he'd have to fucking put it in, the cap would hang in my mouth. It was driving me. Why don't you like cotton? I fucking hate cotton. Really? I like cotton underwear and a cotton t-shirt, but a ball of cotton drys me fucking.

crazy when you rub it on me even like a Q-tip when you fucking stick it in my ear at first that's why I always do those coke pens you ever scratch your ear with a coke pen and shit the oh my god I've seen you do that yeah the blue one yeah you pop it you snort coke but before you snort the coke you scratch your ear with it and the wax holds on to that little coke the next morning you'll be looking for that cuck sucking I was good did you ever put coke in your ear anyway I don't know why would I put coke in my ear I don't know Why are you picking your hair with a pen? Why would I put coke in my ear?

You put it everywhere else. Only dogs put coke in their ears. If you want to get your animal high, that's what the fuck you do. How was your weekend? You got promoted. You did three spots on Thursday. Yeah, it was great. Comedy's been going great.

I was at St. Mark's Comedy Club, too. It was a great weekend. Look at you and shit. I walked up the stairs for one of the last times. I told you. I told you when I met you. You were looking for the first woman. It was not the first.

Oh, my God. I knew when you got it. And now you dropped it on me. Wouldn't I drop it on you? It's beautiful. It's in Harlem. I'm so excited. I was excited.

I'm up the corner from a Chinese restaurant. I'm down the block from this. And all of a sudden, under his breath, he hit me with like, you know, it's also four floors. What? What did you say? No elevator. Four flight. I go, Lee, get the money back.

You're not going to. You can't get the money back. You're not going to fucking go up no four flights of stairs. I know you for years. I'm going to go up. I'm going to go up. I have to over the next couple months because it has AC. She doesn't have AC.

I have good AC. She has like minimal. Get rid of her. This is New York City. The entire girlfriend. This is New York City. If you haven't got AC. She has it, but like it's like New York.

Yeah. Have you ever had the buildings where it's like either hot or air? Yeah. Fuck you. No, you got to get one in their. Oh, I have Central Air in Harlem. Tell you're Jewish and you need one in the, window. Oh, I need

dude, I need AC everywhere. You're a chubby Jewish dude. You're not trying for central air. Oh my God, let's open the window to breeze. Let's fuck you and you fucking breeze. That shit don't work for Uncle Joe. No. People in California pull that. They do. They're just cheap.

We live in the beach. We open up the wind. Go listen. Listen. Listen. Stop. You're just a cheap scape. You're just a fucking cheap fuck. Put the fucking air on. When I'm gone, you can do whatever to You want to open the windows, like candles, rub each other's feet. When Papa's here, put the fucking air condition down.

They shut those fucking windows. I don't want to hear your neighbors fucking doing Yamaste noises next door. One of my favorite stories with you in air conditioning is I think you were in Nashville or somewhere and you turn the AC on so cold that it was too cold to get out of the bed to go pee. Yeah. So you just peeved from the bed. Fuck, yeah. It was too cold.

Sometimes that air conditioning backfires, Jack. And you got to do what you got to do. But these people with, oh, we have fans. Listen, a fan ain't going to work. They got fans in Cuba. Ask them how it's working out for them. You know what I'm saying? They got fans in Puerto Rico, too in August.

Ask them how it's working out for. And they put the string on it so you can see where the air is. Yeah, I don't want to see where it's going. I just want, listen, when I moved to North Bergen when I was 10, my mother made the mistake to put an air conditioner in my window. Oh, yeah. Now, guys, 73, TJ, how much cold a way? in 73 than what the bullshit is we got now.

We had no fucking buildings. This whole river flying, there had no buildings. So that air that comes down from Canada, from fucking, once it would pop up, and then it would catch in the bottom of those North Bergen hills. Your ears were like potato chips. They would just break. They would just break.

That's why a bunch of people in North Bergen don't have ears. They got fucked up ears, Chicka rally, all those motherfuckers, their ear broke. Do you know I used to put my air conditioner on in December? When it didn't even work? By the time I got up in the morning, it was frozen. There was two inches of snow on it. I'd have to leave a bucket under the bed and push the bed.

My mom would go, why do you put the air conditioner on? It's fucking December. I'm one of those type of years. Oh, yeah. I love opening the window in the winter. December, December. Colorado and you too, where T.J. lives, New Mexico. September comes along.

You open the window, isn't it? Oh, you got to get up at 4 in the morning and shut that motherfucker down. It's cold in there. It drops to like 10 and shit. You're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're up in the fucking mountains.

Colorado and July, leave that little window open. I don't care what it was in the daytime. I don't care if the streets were melting. Leave that window. By 5.30, you'll be waking up going, what the fuck? That is something that, like, I'm not, I'm loving New York, but this is going to be my, like, first full summer.

Oh, yeah. And, dude, I was here last summer looking for these apartments. And, like, I would walk out of the house and be like, I'd have to change three times a day. Oh, yeah. And I'm not you who takes three showers a day normally. But fucking, I would be. We've got four flights of stairs. You're in no danger taking that one shower.

Oh, I know. Dude, I'm so happy to be getting out of that fucking place. But who knows? Who knows what? I don't know. You give me. gave me 200 milligrams of fucking coconut gummy. It's already fucking kicking in.

Here we go. We're in training. What do you mean? Here we go. Yeah, we're in training. Biches, we're back. Oh, my God. Dude, I'm not even going to remember Austin.

I already know. People are going to ask me, how is Austin? I have no... You ever see any movies remembering Austin? Nobody wants to remember it. They want to go down there, eat barbecue, shit blood, get chlamydia, and come right back. That's the University of Texas.

A lot of dirty pussy down there. Really? A lot of dirty pussy down there. Really? Dirty fucking white women, puke on the streets. Is that good? I don't want to...

That's tremendous. Why do you want to get chlamydia? You come home with a crab and a little scratching and a little juice coming out of your dick that always makes mama happy. You know what I'm saying? You know, how can you die

without getting chlamydia one time? I'm okay with that. That stupid chick in L.A. who got the fake tits and got married three months later. What did you get the fake tits for? Nobody came on them. She spent three grand on fake tits.

Nobody came on them. She didn't tit fucking anybody. she met one guy and got married. That's it. Take them back. What do you need them for? Take them back. Take them back. Three thousand dollars down the drain. That's it. You're going to have kids. You got to take them out the breastfeed. What would you do that for?

I spent $3,000 on titties. I'm rocking, Jack. I'm at Rudy's smacking people with tits. I'm having a good old time. I'm earning. You can make a little good living with a big pair of tits in a bar. Yeah, but then you're going to have to spend all that money on therapy. After 20 years using your tits in a bar? Well, nobody wants to see you. your tits in 20 years.

Well, yeah, but after 20 years are being used up. She's still going to have great tits, but a stomach like mine. Nobody wants to see you clapping when your whole body fucking shakes, okay? You got a short longevity. Right. Nice fake tits are like a running back. Oh, really? It's three years.

And then what happens? You got to retire them? And then one gets bigger than the other one. The one nipple falls out of line. You got to work those motherfuckerserk. You got to take them out. Have you ever, I've never, like, maybe a stripper, but I don't think I've ever seen. like in person fake tits.

Like no one ever ever fucked has had fake tits, I don't think. You never been with someone with fake tits? I don't think so. Really? Oh, you give them a stab and you lift up the tip. You rub the scar. You punch it a little bit. Do you punch the scar?

Sure, you rubbs. They love it. You press your finger in there, you dirty fucking flat chest and cock suckers. You fucking. Who do you think you're lying? It's a ha. You press that finger in there. They love it.

Pain and pleasure at the same time. Jesus, I don't like, I did, I did hook up with a girl once who had the reduction. I was really pissed off when she told me. I bet you were. I was like, why would you get it reduced? Why did you got it reduced? I don't know. Oh, it would be a fucking bummer.

They always tell you that because my back was hurting. Let it hurt, bitch. Lay down. Oh, my God. The ancestors, they're all bent over. Who gives the fuck your back hurts? I went to school with a girl that had gigantic teaching grammar school. I mean, they were gigantic.

I mean, gigantic. She was cute. but her back started hurting too what are you going to do they had to bury their tits now she's got like sea cups all right what are you going to do they still work would you ever do anything like did you ever like think about like any sort of plastic surgery

all the time I think I'm going in next week I'm gonna do my nut sack my foot I'm gonna do my face I'm gonna look like fucking Mel Gibson I don't know how you fucking retarded dude they do a lot of shit like they can make your dig bigger yeah but who needs that I don't know who needs that why don't you go and get your digger

bigger like a because I can't show up now in the bigger dick 21 inch dick a Jew that'd be nice do a review and fucking a review of my day oh call it what's the guy's name run Jeremy no run Jeremy what's the guy that runs Israel's name um uh fucking not nanyahu's favorite missile that's it'll be just you just do a male review you bring ironberg with you another Jew I don't think he wants to see my dick no listen when it's two feet everybody wants to see your dick When you have a two-foot dick, everybody wants to take a peek. They won't tell you. It's like that girl at three in the morning.

I don't want to have sex. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to see your dick. Yeah, they do want to see your dick. Because you got a 21-inch dick. 26-inch. Let's do 2.2 feet of dick. 1.8 when it's cold, okay?

Everybody wants to see your dick. You can open up an open mic, charge five bucks. People come in, and for $10, they can touch it. Like, they can rub it. That's where the market picks up. What was that Mark Wahlberg movie? You sell T-shirts afterward. I touched a big dick.

This is a big business here. I went to New York and all I got was it touch a dick. You want to come to me with business? I got business for you. What was that Mark Wahlberg movie where he had the huge dick? Boogie nights. And he would just let guys look at it in the back, right? Or what would it?

It was crazy. Does it matter? Of course. You're the one talking about a two-foot dick. Oh, my God. If I had a two-foot dick, I wouldn't wear underwear. I just take the ticket Why?

Because why? It's not a ticket It's jail What do you mean You're gonna walk around? Take the ticket What's the story? You got your pants off

Look at the size of this fucking horn Between my legs You wanna fuck with me cock suck? It's 10 degrees on them I got 1.8 over here I'm plumbed out And you want to give me a ticket Do you know what my grandfather is?

You know the size of his fucking dick Oh Fucking Lee We're back motherfuckers in a big way and we'll be back with our guest. It's Tuesday, this 15th, the halfway mark. So get your shit together. The Church New Testament is here, Coxuckers. We'll be right back. What's happened, beautiful people? Uncle Joey here for Blue Chew. Listen, if a soft sausage is holding you back from meeting the love of your life, Blue Chew has what you need. They send

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Visit bluechew.com for, more details and important safety information. And I want to thank Blue Choo for sponsoring the show. We're back, bitches, with author, extraordinary, and dear, dear friend, Mr. T.J. Motherfucking English in the house. Hey, Joey, how you doing? Pull that mic up, T.J. English. How are you doing, Joe?

I'm doing well, my brother. How about you? Always a pleasure to see you. Yeah. I don't see you often enough. What's happening? I know, I know. I live right fucking here.

I know, I know. I wish I would do more stuff for you, maybe go to the blue note or something. Anytime. I know you're a Blue Note type of guy. I tried to get some shows there, but they were already booked for the year, just like maybe something at 8 o'clock. Yeah, you've got to get tickets early there.

You've been to the Blue Note? It's one of my favorite places. He runs it. He's the fucking king in there. He does what he wants. And Mr. Blue. He puts the Blue and Blue. Have you been to the other ones?

I've been to all the Jazz Clubs. Hawaii? They have one in Hawaii? Yeah. Oh, no. I haven't been to those. They got them all over now, though, I noticed. Seattle or San Diego.

A lot of places. I always see an advertisement for something like Houston. I mean, I didn't know they had a blue note in Houston. Wow, that's a good place. So they franchised. What? Yeah. I think it's funny because there was no jazz around at all when I was a little kid growing up.

and they had, they might have had some Sinatra stuff. So I got a little flavor of it, but it wasn't until I got to college, Southern California, in the late 70s, and I would just go to these great old used record stores near the beach in Santa Monica. And I started buying jazz records. And I just was winging it, you know, this looks interesting. I mean, I kind of knew, okay, I've heard of Duke Ellington, and let me listen to that.

And I just started to explore it and then just got into it, man. Just got into it. There's no other music like jazz to me. It's got soul and you feel it, but it's also kind of intellectual. There's like a thought process involved in it. And I don't know anything about music,

but seeing it live, which is new for me, like I saw it at the blue note and then I went to Nashville and saw it at a jazz place. It was great. Like live in a small place is cool as shit. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, it's just like you can really get into it.

And I know you're not here to talk about jazz, but I love the blue note. I love it. You can talk about anything. Hey, the last book I wrote was about jazz. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Saw jazz and its historical connections to organized crime. Oh, shit.

Yeah. There's more to that story than you would think. I mean, jazz and the mob and the mafia in the United States kind of all started at the same time. in different cities like New Orleans and Chicago and New York. And were they owned clubs? They owned clubs. They owned the very first jazz clubs. So they were in on the ground floor

as the presenters of the music. All the clubs are, most of the clubs are in every city. Large cities and even medium-sized cities were run by the local mob element. That's who ran the jazz clubs. And just because it was a cash business? Like, why would they pick jazz? Jazz was, jazz.

was, you know how big hip-hop was when hip-hop just first started to really hit in the 80s and captured everybody's imagination? Jazz was that times 10. Sure. Jazz was like a cultural phenomenon. There'd never been any music like that. All there'd been in America up to that point was, you know, bluegrass and folk music and then classical music from Europe, European music, basically.

Jazz was like American. It was the blues, had the blues. in the roots of it, and it all started in New Orleans. So it was a phenomenon, man. It was really popular. Everybody went to jazz clubs. Whenever I watch a movie from, like, that time, and, like, people are out at, like, seeing music and, like, doing stuff every night.

Like, that doesn't happen anymore. Like, people were out seeing something every night because that was, like, there wasn't TV or, like, it was crazy. Yeah. I can't imagine how big that. Was it, like, a huge part of the mob's business? It wasn't a huge part of their business. It wasn't so much economic as it was prestige.

It was like the hottest thing. Like everyone's coming to your club, and everyone wants to be seen in your club, and everyone wants to be at your club. It was great advertising for a mobster, you know? Oh, shit. Yeah. It gave them stature. And they became friendly with some of the musicians and hung out with them and stuff.

So there was a lot of cross-pollination. That's awesome. It's really weird when you... I used to go to a... When I first started a county, 93, 94, around there. My Tribble had a run in Colorado. And this was one of those rooms that... It was in Gunnison or one of those off to...

Not Denver or Boulder. Yeah, you know? And I never going to that one night, doing the show, and like another 75 bucks. people didn't like me and on the way out I started talking to the owner and he took me in the back and he was like no

we started just doing comedy in whatever it was 89 when the comedy boom before that we did everything and he took me in the back this was a little fucking club in Gunnison Colorado everybody was there

everybody he even told me that the only comedian he did start it bringing was Roseanne. That one time she showed up with Tom Arnold and that he got so coked up in blood that when he she pulled the, when he pulled the

fucking mattress out, it was just blood all over the mattress from his nose and shit. But it's really weird. It had gone back to like the 50s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a bunch of people and I can't remember all the top and I don't know. I do remember the Roseanne's

story, but just, you know, it's... That's a throw back to like the days of burlesque entertainment, where you had a venue and you had all these variety of acts, you know, you had musicians, you had fucking jugglers, you had all kinds of shit, dancing. Baudville? Baudville. Right, something like that.

Baudville. And it would travel around the country, and it was huge. You'd go to all these different cities, big cities, little-sized cities. And, yeah, jazz was a part of that a little bit when it first started. That was put in the mix, those vaudeville shows. But guys like Sammy Davis Jr. came out of that. Yeah, that's, I miss, I miss that kind of nightlife. I don't know why I was thinking about this a few days ago.

The comedy store, Ceros, it was Ceros before that. Yeah. I got to remember, guys, that was a full service club. sex, booze, and if your chick got pregnant, the belly room is where they did the abortion. That's why they called it, the belly room. It was a little bit of a nightclub. You walked through the comedy store.

You will find hidden passages. You will find where Bugsy Siegel, because that was his club. Yeah, that's all back from, you know, Prohibition. So you could see where he would watch the shows in the main room from Stan. standing up there nobody could see him there's two-way mirrors all over that fucking place

I was remembering this that Mitzie's office was a safe you know those safe that you open up and going through the wall like a bank damn they had that much cash coming in you had open that's no it was an old fucking safe I know but I'm saying they had that much cash coming in with a serious okay that's all for no but you're saying it was when it was zeroes it was a safe that's all from prohibition days that's all prohibition when there was illegal activities like booze and gambling going on in those establishments. Yeah, fuck. I fantasize about that era.

You too. A lot. And you could go downstairs to the basement and you could, there's a secret path. And if you find that if they got raided, there was a way for them to get out and come out on the alley or something. On the valley. I'm by the fucking hell. I mean, dog, it is very interesting.

Yes. Like, it's very interesting what they did. And it's funny, because when I read your book about the jazz, that's what I was feeling in those clubs. Yeah. You know, never mind money laundering, making money off the fucking probation. I mean, you know, mobsters just,

it was just a way to cleanse money, and it was a sign of stature. So it made fucking sense. And they all wore beautiful suits. All the, all the gangsters dressed fine, man. They, they, everything about them from head to toe was this finery, the best suits, the best tailor.

So when they were in a club, there was this guy, only Madden, who ran the cotton club when it was in its heyday. And he was a fucking Irish punk from Hell's Kitchen. And had been the leader of a gang called The Gophers.

And he did some serious shit. He even went away and did time for murder. And he came back and it was the middle of prohibition. And he was like, oh, shit. None of this existed when I went away to prison. And now he should come back. He's like, I'm going to make the most of this. So he started making connections with politicians and the police.

He started using corruption to create a system. Let me make a long story short. Within a year, he was the biggest bootlegger in all of New York City. And he wouldn't step outside. So they called him, what was his nickname? It'll come to me. He had a catchy nickname, something to do with Broadway. Because he'd hang out on Broadway.

And he was a boy, he had an affair. with Mae West. He had a fling with May West. This guy was the cock of the walk, as I used to say. And, but he never went anywhere unless he was dressed to the nines, man. He didn't show himself in public. And the gangsters were like that. It was kind of a very elegant presentation. You could see why people were attracted the allure of the gangster, you know, they had that sex appeal. They really had it. Even when you watch the raging bull, when they go to that fair in the beginning where the first fight is, everybody's dressed for the fucking nice. Oh, yeah. And those suits are gorgeous. Yeah. The women, too, though, they dress up in the, in the, in the,

finery and in the dresses. Yeah, that got lost along the way, man. I guess it was the 60s, really, that, you know. I used to remember dressing up to fly. Like, my mother would make me put a fucking suit on to fly anywhere. I'm like, anywhere. To fly. And then as I got old, I'm like, when are we going to wear a suit more? Now people are wearing flip-flop. some pajamas and dirty hair. How do you do, if you're like, you know, doing research on something like this, you can't Google like the mobsters, like, do you interview people? Like, how do you research this?

That was a tough one. That's a good question because the different books I've done have different research requirements. And this one was tough because it was ancient history and there was no one left, no sources. Nobody that talked to. A lot of my books like this recent one, it's all. all interviews, firsthand accounts. But this was like everyone's dead and gone.

So how do you recreate that? The first thing I had to read the memoirs and biographies of all those musicians. And I had to find little references in those biographies to the gangster element and stuff. It was there. Usually it was like a chapter maybe in someone's thing. And so I had to coalesce all that knowledge about that. And then I had to find a story to tell. And I found the story to tell by focusing on two main guys.

The first half of the book is Lewis Armstrong and the gangsters. And the second half of the book is Sinatra and the gangsters. And so telling those two stories, you get like the whole history of that relationship. And how do you, if you're doing research like that, How do you know what to trust based off of what you find? Like just one memoir, like, do you have to see it mentioned in a couple different books? Yeah, you got to cross-checking. You got to verify it usually.

When I was... But then there's a thing called folk history where you make it clear that, all right, this hasn't been vetted, but this is what the story was. Right. You know? And after a while, the story becomes real history. You know, it's what has longevity. Like a good story lasts forever. You know what I mean?

You can tell stories about Sinatra. Nobody cares if they're true or not. They're good fucking stories. You know? He always had good fucking stories. Just that it was, and when I was doing the Westies, I remember I would hear the most outlandish stories about the Westies. But I knew the stuff that they had done was verified that you could prove.

There was proof, witnesses, that kind of thing. And that shit was outrageous. So anything I heard that someone would say that they did, I'd have to think, well, it could be true. Like I heard some wild shit about them with a head rolling it down the counter in a bar. Some guy's head they'd cut off. I couldn't verify that to be true. But they did other shit that was equally as wild. That was bad.

They did cut off hands and put them in the freezer with the idea that they were going to save the fingerprints to plant on murder weapons. when Joey told me that you were coming on, the thing that I was thinking about is like, you have like one of the few professions, and I'm sure it's changed, but like you're writing books the same way, like a lot of like 100 years ago people were writing books. Like it's kind of,

there's not many things left like writing a book. Yeah, you know, it's an ancient art. It freaks me out sometimes when I think about it, when I'm writing a book and I'm lost in the middle of it and, you know, I got a stack of pages, but still I got another stack to get to the end of it, and it's fucking, it's intimidating. And I'm always thinking,

nobody's going to want to read this fucking book. Nobody reads books anymore. They say, this is like prehistoric. This is so ancient. This is the voice I'm hearing in my head, right? You stupid motherfucker, this is the 21st century, just what you were saying. This is like primitive.

People open a book of written pages on a piece of paper, and that can hold their attention for sometimes hours at a time. That's like real primitive storytelling if you can pull that off. But it can. But now we're in an era where that's a dying, I think that's a dying art, people being able to do that. Nobody has the attention spans anymore so much. To write it or to tell it?

Both, or to read it, you know. There's still people. or legit, you know, that they don't mind. Listen, the thing I miss about the most is not flying as much because that was the only place I could read on a plane. Yeah. With peace.

It's the best. If it's four hours, two hours, it wasn't my peace. Ever since I stopped traveling, I read books when I was in the hospital. As a matter of fact, I read the corporation again when I was in the hospital last time. And I got a question for you because I laughed for two hours. When you said that,

Because every time you read a book, people always go, why would I read that book? I read it already. You're stupid motherfucker. You're going to catch it. You didn't read before. I'll read a book once a year. If I really like a book, I'll read it once a year.

Cujo, Corporation, fucking Havana nocturn. There's another one I read every fucking year. The One about, you know, The Art of War, the War of Art, the Frank Pressfield, whatever. I read that every January, just to keep my mind fresh.

But you fucking dropped the line in there that I fucking died in the hospital. You said something about that they call people from Oriente, the Palestinians. Oh, Palestinians. Oh, my God. They still do that. Because they're men without land. Yeah. Oh, my God.

And the only, that's a Cuban sense of humor. That's a very Cuban sense of human. He called me up when he read it. Dying. Dying. Dying. Dian. Lopalitiano.

Yeah. You have no land here. You have no land. Yeah. That's, and how do you, because like, what I was trying to relate it to was I'm, like, at the very beginning of stand-up and I have to not only write jokes, but weave them together and like putting it here versus here matters. Yeah. Like, with a story, like, yours isn't even a novel.

It's like actual things that happened. weaving that together into a story must be completely different. Oh, it's a big task. But that's the creative part. That's where the artistry comes in, you know, where you take all that. A lot of people can gather the material, but not everybody can tell that story

in a way that really grabs a reader or a viewer or whatever. I think about what you guys do as writers a lot because you're right. It's a much different form, but you're kind of doing the same thing. You're structuring a set, right, where you want it to tell a story. To flow.

You want to get called back. You want to have pauses, and it takes time because you have to do it on the drawing board and also on stage. Yeah. See, that's the difference. Like, I would love to write a book where you could, what do you call that shit?

Talk it to people. Yeah. What's that called? Workshop it? Workshopping, you know, a chapter every week for people. You get like six chapters ahead of year, and then you just do it once a week. That would help me a lot if I did that, you know,

because I know how to test it on the fucking battle. Yeah, but also you clearly, here's another thing. You clearly have the storytelling skills. Right. The storytelling skills. Yeah, you learn that. That's the, you might have to be born with that to an extent, right? The storytelling skills.

I think of it is coming from the ancestors, you know, like it comes from somewhere. You inherited that. Really? Yeah. George Carlin used to say you don't lick it off a rock. You got it from somewhere. You know, you got it from your ancestors. That's crazy.

So the storytelling, yeah. And then you fine-tuned it with the life that you live, you know? Right, you fine-to. It's very, I have a storyteller show on Sunday. And I was banging my head on the story, what am I going to do, what am I going to do? And all of a sudden this morning, I'm eating fucking breakfast.

And a complete different story came in that's going to weave and it's perfect. Now I could tell the story about the wing getting caught in the pussy and all that shit because now it's going to work. Now it's going to work. Yeah, click. Everything's fit. It took fucking three months of thinking.

And I was going somewhere else the whole time. and then this morning it hit me from a different perspective and I was just talking to the girl I wrote the book with and she was telling me that she'd been going to her father's house to write because she has authors block at a house and I was like I've been going through the same fucking thing and when I go to Starbucks I can't write shit either that's fucking terrible energy in Starbucks

nobody can write in there what are you going to write in there about lattes and shit and so I started writing in the garage Oh shit Yeah last night I just went in the garage Because I got a little freezer in there I put my pad on there on the computer

And I was And this fucking morning I think in your sleep You're gonna have to set up a little table out there A little desk you know But even like I was just thinking Like you might like that there's no desk Like are you walking around and like doing stuff

As you're writing? No no I just sat in the garage I put the Bluetooth on Okay And I fucking sat there for 30 minutes. I made great notes. And I wasn't even going there. Like I said to you, I wasn't going there. This morning, something came in.

And I go, if I added to that, it'll be the fucking perfect fucking story. You know, I often have to remind myself, so, you know, when you have a writing task, you do anything to avoid it. You know, you do all kinds of shit to avoid it. And so I'll go for long, long, walks along the river and I'll be hard on myself because you should be writing right now. But no, those walks along the river are really valuable. Very valuable.

In terms of thinking time, you know. That's part of the process. So you have to do that periodically. My whole thing is I like the warmer weather because I could write and then take a note and then smoke a joint and then put earphones on and go for a walk. You leave that alone. You just go for a walk on that. And sometimes when you come back,

you might have the answer or you might not. Or you might get the answer to something else. Okay, and that's always been a fucking thing I love also. So yeah, writing is, I wish I would have gone to college for it. I wish I would have put more effort into it in my stand-up career early on because I just would have built better habits.

You know, when you do stand-up, it's like writing. Yeah, you just put out a book, but you're writing, motherfucker. That book just came out, but you've been writing lately because you know you can't just shut it down for a year and wait and fan your pussy and it'll come to me. You've got to keep writing that muscle, even if it's just what your day is going to be about or how your day went.

Yeah, it's a muscle. That makes sense. It's a fucking muscle. What if you want to fan your pussy? See, though. If you want a fan your pussy, then you fan your pussy. It's your pussy. You can do whatever you want.

It's like, Joe, because you, I, like, that was, you said something before the podcast, like little commitments, become big commitments. You said that the entire time I've known you. But, like, you've been writing, you wrote it, you were writing that book. When I first met you, you were writing it. And it, like, how many times did it change? Did it change 20 times? Yeah.

I was like, I wouldn't even let what T.J. happens to him where he writes it all, and then he beats himself up. I would beat myself up from the beginning. Like, nobody wants to read that I found my mother on the floor. Nobody wants to read that I robbed a jewelry store. Nobody wants to hear about you raising your fucking stupid kid. Nobody wants to hear anything. That's what I was going through in my mind. Talk yourself out. But it's really weird. You write 10 stories, and what you're looking for is a connective. you need that to touch throughout and that's I can tell you stories for hours connecting them that takes time yeah yeah yeah we call that the narrative that takes time the narrative you know that holds it all together

that takes time and that's when it sings baby that's when you know you have something that's real you know that reaches that does still reach people even though books maybe are not popular in that way anymore

but to people who read books, it can have a real impact. How do you think... I like to read, like, I'm a nerd. I like to, I have lack of, I have not great comprehension. So when I read a book, it took me 20 years to figure this out, I have to read a book with a marker. I have to learn how to read, I can't go with three chapters because I'm going to have to

wake up and I'm going to read those three chapters again. So I go to two and I pace myself. Then I'll read parts of it again. and then I'll start in the next chapter but it took me 20 years to learn So what's the marker for? To retain the good stuff from the book Oh, you underlined things.

Yeah. Yeah, I do that too. Why not? I do that. I write in the margins. I do that. I get into it. You know, everybody says,

I like to smoke pot and go for a midnight walk. Go fuck yourself. I like smoking pot, getting a light, and maybe a pot of coffee. And just sit in there and roll another job. So you could smoke it with the coffee as you read your book. Oh, you get high and read, huh?

Oh. Yeah, I can't really do that. Oh. I don't retain it if I do that. That might be the retention problem. Yeah. Well, if you get too high, you start reading and then stories from your life come in. Start going into your head, right?

Just remind me of the time. I was going to go for you. Because your imagination is inflamed, but while you're reading it, right? It's exorcensory and you're picking up a lot of other shit. But at the same time, I want to feel the book. I want to cry. I want to feel hurt when the writer gets hurt. I want to feel, like, I like reading and crying.

Like, let me give me an example. The other night I was switching through the fucking channels, and the last 30 minutes of Carrie was on. One of the greatest 30 minutes of television and movie history. In fact, Travolta, that's how they got you to go see that movie, was Travolta was in the movie, but he don't come out to the end when he gets killed. He was kind of a nobody at that part.

At that point, no, no, he was, it had been like maybe six episodes of Welcome Back Carter. Yeah. And the girls liked him, so that's why you went to see that movie. They must have been disappointed because he's hardly in it. Yeah, he's what? He's hardly in it. Yeah, he gets killed at the end. Yeah.

But it's so weird, I was watching the last half hour in that movie. And I remember reading that book and not even knowing who the author was, not even giving a fuck who the author was. And then years later, I got on writing. and he tells the story how his wife threw that away about what was he thinking about? People move things with their mind. Yeah, telekinesis?

Yes. And his wife threw it away and when he got home, she gave it back to him and said, finished this and that became fucking Carrie. And I'm thinking about how the fuck he wrote that. Like I, even with you, with the corporation,

Havanaugh-Nocturn, the Westies, I like reading a book and then for like a day or two going, how to fuck this motherfucker right that? that's how much I take in a book. For a writer, that's a great compliment.

Yeah, because you want to think, in your act, what you do, you want to think, I just want to dazzle these motherfuckers. I want to like make them have to go, fuck,

how did he do that? And I know you must get that feeling in your stand-up, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're just gonna kick ass. Yeah, you're flowing and you're seeing them and then you start laughing. That's the money.

That's the money that nobody could pay you enough for when you start laughing. That's why I was having a hard time writing jokes and not smoking pot, because I like to get blished when I was right. So if I'm giggling, motherfucker, that joke's getting written down. As dirty or as nasty as it can be, I'm writing that bitch down. So as you're writing shit down and you start to, you know, call your way through it, how much of it do you keep? How much of it is good and how much of it is just...

Let's go 50%. Oh, that's good. 50% is good. 50 is god awful. You know? That's the danger about writing comedy when you get high that you might wake up in the morning and find some shit that you're going to go,

Doug, I got to see a priest. This is not good. No, he's like, I got to burn that. No, I'm lying to you. And now that we break it down, I retain 20%. I was going to say 50% is high. Yeah, I was saying 20%, especially if I'm getting high and I write a page. First off, the first hour, I got to figure out what I wrote.

It's hieroglyphics. I'm so high. And I start writing Joey shorthand. Like, I start writing my own shorthand, and I don't remember it the next day. You know, there's a ton of problems. Yeah. Yeah, tons of fucking problems. You know what Carlin said about how he did it?

was he would write his stuff not high at all. He would complete what he thought was an act, and then he would get high and punch it up. Punch it up, yeah. And that was the point where he would get high. And he said, that was always really good value stuff that you were bringing in, you know. It's funny because I do that with acting auditions.

If you send me an acting audition, I read it, I read it, I read it, I read it, I read it, I read it. Then I get hot. then I read it, I read it, I read it, and then I start making notes. What goes here, where I'm taking a pause, where I'm going to take a drink of water, where I'm going to scratch my ass, everything.

If I'm going to improvise, I'll put something there. That's when that works. Weed is very valuable for your creative process now, right? It's got to be great weed. Like, I want to drool. I want to fucking drool like a monkey. I want to drool, be left to fuck alone, a little bit of music,

Not too loud. Snapple iced tea, lemon, no sweetener in it, that shit. I could go for hours, two hours writing. And no computers. Yeah. I use computers for research. Everything is written by my hand. Well, you're describing the process of being a writer and how isolated and alone that is.

I'm an only child. And you tune the whole world out and you create your own little world that you're working on in your writing. Absolutely. I don't even like when my fucking wife comes down because you're writing something good and also when she'll come down are you hungry yet? Listen I look fucking hungry to you but I don't want to shut the door because that's an insult so I can't

so I gotta wait till they leave for me to do anything You're maintaining your sanity down there Yeah, that's what you're doing you know I'm an only child I'm ready I've always been Eddie I love smoking dope and just disappear Right listen when I was 18 everybody was going to Hawaii and this. My goal was to get a million dollars

and move to an island by myself and smoke dope and eat chicken collins and drink cranberry juice. That's happiness for me. Nobody bothering me. Nobody talking to me. That's not bad. How old were you when you came up with that? 18, 19. I'm like, if it was up to me, at that age I wanted to move to Cartagena and buy a big rock and coke. That's so very clear-headed for an

19-year-old, right? Don't you think? I knew all. I knew all. I knew all those things. I also knew at 14 that I was not going to work days. I loved people who had days off. They had more freedom in their lives. Yeah. They were out on the corner when it was hot, getting a hot dog, and then they weren't to work at night

when it didn't really fucking matter. That's a complete different discipline. Because I didn't like going out either. I could care less about going to a club or being in the VIP. So if you could pay me at night, and I could have my days to myself. No drama. Because when you're

walking in the house, everybody's leaving for work. You can go in there and make a cheese omelet, put on fucking Popeye and sit there, nobody's going to come in and break your fucking balls. Everybody's at work. You're living the dream, baby. No, but I've always loved that. That's what I mean. You had that dream, and now you're living that dream.

Oh, having a day job for me, it was always fucking brutal. And I would do it, and then I'd go, what the fuck? I could steal something. I could sell an eight ball and make 75 bucks. You know, it's a grind. I know guys like you. A lot of guys like you wind up into criminal life. Yeah.

Because they can't take the grind of having to do a nine to five. I got to work 12.50. I'm working 12 fucking 10 hours a day. I'm going to make a buck 25 a day. I can make that fucking breaking into a room. I know a guy that's got that in his pocket right fucking now. And that's what happened. I go, you know what the time I become a human being.

And I take these jobs in Colorado. And I'd be drilling fucking beams, getting bit by mosquito bites. And after like, once the check came, and I'm like, $300? Yeah. I got bit. I had to fucking eat a salami sandwich.

You'd see all the deductions from the check? I'm like, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. It's not working to me no more. It's not worth it to me. So I went without for years just to prove my point. I'm not working days. I would work days enough to get money,

and then I quit. and then I'd fucking figure out there was, when I lived in Boulder my rent was due and every day before my rent was due, I did not know how I was get that $400. And I didn't care. And I'll tell you all the times I got that $4.00

and you would die. Like I remember it, I would just go to Kmart and wait for people to drop receipts. And I would pick them up in the wind and the deep, late spend $300 hours. I'd just go in there and took everything they take and return it without even walking. out the store.

Wouldn't even walk out the fucking store. I don't know one time I needed to rent and a guy dropped a receipt with 500 bucks for a loanmower and I went in to go to steal it and they didn't have it in Boulder. So I got in the car and I went to Kmart and Longmont and they had one left.

I actually walked in there, put the receipt on it, walked up to the guy and he's like, what's going on? I go, I just got this, I don't want. I didn't even buy it at that store. He took the receipt. He didn't buy it in any store. So how old were you at this time when you were doing this?

20. This is out of prison. Out of prison. Knowing that I could go back to jail any time. And then I did get caught one day and I gave a fake name. And they take me to Boulder and I'll never forget. I walk in Boulder and all the cops know me. Joey, what's going on? Joey, how are you doing? You're back. We told you you'd be back. But I used a different name when they arrested me. They got the card out. They fingerprinted me. I still remember that cop's name. That fake ID?

No. He's calling me Joey. And the card says James something else. And he's pressing. And I'm like, I hope he doesn't look at that fucking card. I was in there 36 days already, 30 days over the holiday. They knew who I was. Their fingerprint me going, Joey, how are you doing?

I'm like, oh, if this motherfucker looks at this fingerprint card and he sees this name, he's going to shoot his pants, and I got away with it. And then when I went to court, they pulled. me aside and they go, we know who you are. And I did the, I went back to court under that name. I did the probation under that name, and I had to do community service. And I did it just to fucking... Nobody ever asked to see an ID?

Not one. And at the community service, I became friends with a cop. I picked the HIV building. And I would paint it and take the garbage out, the HIV building. And after the job was over, about a year later, I smacked my ex-wife's boyfriend. the cop that came to arrest me, was the cop from the HIV kid. He wouldn't arrest me.

He's like, I'll give him a ticket. And he gave the other guy a ticket for calling me a racial slur. So every story fits. You see what I'm saying? In my life, tremendous. You got a little angel over your shoulder, man. Yeah.

How fucking crazy. You got an angel and you got a devil. Oh, I got a big devil. But my angels got a big dick and he's... My angels got a big dick and he's Cuban. You know how those cubes. what angels are, dog. They ain't fucking around,

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Four additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.com slash audio. So the last kilo. Talk to me, brother. We've talked about everything but the last kilo. Last kilo. There's a little bit of New Jersey in that book, but it's mostly my name. boys, Cubans in Miami. What's the guy's name?

The two brothers? Willie Falcone, and his brother's name was Gustavo, Tavi. But his partner was Sal McCluda. So Willie and Sal, they were kind of legendary figures in Miami, starting in early 80s, all through the

80s, really, until they got busted. And they created a gang called Los Mucachos. And those Mucachos were the biggest, by far, importers and distributors of kilos in the U.S. So they created a distribution network based in Miami

that was shipping it eventually to L.A. and San Francisco and Chicago and New York, everywhere. And they only dealt at the high level. Like in these different cities, they had maybe like eight customers, but there were eight customers that were buying bulk. and so they were operating at that level. And interestingly enough, there wasn't a lot of violence in this story at that level of the cocaine business. I really learned some shit researching this because, you know, we're all primed to believe that the cocaine universe is just bloodshed from top to bottom and, you know, oozes and chainsaws like Scarface.

So I just assumed that there was going to be nothing but violence and any cocaine story that you tell. But this story, there wasn't a lot of violence the way they were doing it. They were Cuban exiles. They were tight. They were that first generation of exiles whose parents had been humiliated and had to leave. And these kids were like 10 or 11. And they grew up watching their parents' supper in a sense. and they were driven by this desire to make it, to make it by hook or by crook.

And the cocaine thing just kind of fell in their lap. I go into it in the book. It was actually connected to the anti-Castro movement in the CIA. And they were bringing kilos to United States to sell and use that money to buy arms and explosives for the contras in Central America. So it was all wrapped up in that political politics of it from the get-go. And so that's how Willie and Sal first got into it. They started doing it to raise money for the anti-Castro movement.

And then the anti-Castro movement got busted, led to the Iran-Contra hearings. It was a big political scandal. So that shut down. But by then Willie and Sal had created a system. And they were like, well, let's just keep doing it. and keep all the money for us. And that's when they became Los Muchasas. And they just, they created this very complex apparatus of bringing, they'd go right to the

source, they'd meet with Escobar. They were, they were dealing with both the Colombians, I mean, sorry, with the people from Medellin and the Cali people, they were double dipping. The two didn't, those two cartels didn't know. Willie and Sal didn't let it be known. If you follow in me, like, Meneeneene didn't know they were dealing with Cali, and Cali didn't know they were dealing with Medellin,

because neither side probably would have approved of it. But they were doing it, and they did it at a very high level, and they came up with a system to bring the kilos into the U.S., and they did that in all kinds of ingenious ways. They had their own pilots and planes, but they also had boats. They wound up being championship powerboat racers.

They were big powerboat races. Yeah. I mean, they own the powerboat racing business. They owned a company that built the engines. It was a great way to launder. A great way to launder money, by the way. The company that built the engines, the company that built the boats.

They were designing the boat. They were designing them. And then they got to race them. And they were going into races, Borgadas, all over the world. you know? Well, they had a warrant out of them. Yeah, well, they had a warrant out of them eventually, yeah.

Yeah, and they watched this. There was a series on it. Yes, there was. Yeah. A month ago or something, I called you, I go, I'm watching these two fucking. Yeah, that's Willie and Sal. So I was able to do this book because Willie Falcone's family reached out to me. He did 27, 28 years, something like that.

And as he was getting to the end of that bit, his daughter contact to me. It was like, you know, he knows your work. He'd read the Westies. He'd read Havana nocturn. And corporation was just coming out at that time. So he got it in his head that I was the guy to do his book. And he had his daughter reach out to me. And I didn't know enough about him to know whether I would want to do it or not. I think I said no when it first came up. I said, I can't really answer that because I would have to at least meet, have a chance to talk to him, you know. So I tried to get into prison to see him, and prison shut it down. They wouldn't let me in. So I had to wait until he got out, which was a couple of years

later. And then when he got out, they deported him from the United States because he'd never bothered getting U.S. citizenship. He was a Cuban. He came over that, he came over that time when Cubans were being given a kind of special legal status, you know. So he never even bothered to become a citizen. So they deported his ass. And so now I'm getting to know him a little bit because we're doing Zoom conference calls. So I'm getting a feel for him. And he gets supported to the DR, and then the DR finds out, one of the DR politicians finds out he's there and starts accusing another politician of letting a big narco in the country, so they kick him out of there, out of the DR. He's got to go hat and hand, find another country. I can't tell you the country

where he's in, although it would be, I think, real easy to guess. So I had to go there to interview him face-to-face. And it was right in the middle of COVID, and it was a pain in the ass, getting a plane. I'll say South America, I'll general, you know, narrow it down. And I kept missing flights because I didn't have the proper test, COVID test before the plane. It was a nightmare getting there. But I got there and I met this guy. And for like three days, we just did interviews all day long. We'd start pretty early, like 9 a.m. and we'd go to lunch, have some food,

and then come back and do another three hours or so. And we did that for like three days, him just telling me his life story. And I had it, man. I remember coming back thinking, wow, I've never had this kind of access with a source. They tell me their whole life story.

And everyone wanted... Willie Falcone hadn't talked to anybody. So everyone wanted to know his story. He was like a mystery man, very charismatic, and I got that motherfucker's story and was able to tell that story. And it was a... You know, I know he's a criminal, he's a bad guy,

and he certainly paid for it and everything. But it was kind of an honor to tell his story. He was a... He's a guy with a certain code honor. He's a criminal, you know, the certain criminals, to me, are almost like royal in a sense. Criminal royalty because they have that

sense of honor about what they do. Especially you guys who put crews together and do robberies. I have a friend who is an incredible source up in Boston, Irish American gangster named Pat Ney. He was kind of a rival

and later a partner or Whitey Bulgers. He started out as a thief, you know, breaking into a warehouse. houses and shit. And as he started to advance up from that, he started doing armored car robberies. And I've had late night conversations with him many times over some Irish whiskey or whatever. And he's telling me what he knows about his life as a thief. And he would put together crews. And I

had said to him, you know, one of the things about putting together a robbery crew to do something like that to me, I was like, how do you do quality control? How do you know, these got to be people you really trust. Your

crew that you're going to do an armored car robbery with, there's got to be people. You have total faith in and you totally trust. And so you want to know none of these guys are going to break and snitch we're in this to the end

you know and and and and I'd say yeah but how can you how can you guarantee that and and he said you can't guarantee it he said but you always wanted to try to make sure because otherwise you were going to have to take care of that person there's a weak link you were you're going to have to address the week so that person would wind up getting killed. That person and the crew, that's just the nature of putting together a criminal crew like

that. And they did, they did, he'd tell me these stories of how they'd do warehouse robberies where they'd, they'd pull up a big truck like two in the morning at a warehouse. This is back like in the 60s, 70s. And they'd actually pull the open truck butt up against the wall. and then they'd get hammers and shit and just break the fucking wall down. Just take out a big section of the wall.

And then they go in there like mice and they just start looking for what was the valuable shit, you know, the most valuable shit. He said long-term shit is canned goods and stuff. Anyway, they'd go in there, they'd fleece the place and then he said, you know what their signature was? after they'd do one of these robberies and they wanted people to know it was their crew

they'd find a desk of who they thought was the most important person in there and they'd open the bottom drawer and they would shit in it and that was supposed to be like that was their joke that was their signature that was their fucking car that was like a worst signature

that was we were here you know you talk about criminals the American part has been, we love criminal. And we love their stories. And, you know, I mean, look at all the criminal movies we have from the 30s, Scarface. Yeah.

All these fucking... I still love them. I still love them. I love all those movies. Those Jimmy Cagney movies? Fuck it, he's crazy. What are you talking to him for? You know, all that shit. But, you know, it's a market that'll never fucking end.

Like, look at this poor De Niro movie, Alto Nights. It died, a death. And I don't think it was a bad movie. Yeah. I don't think it was a bad. Did you see it? No. I don't, I didn't have a chance to they.

I know. We did it. They yanked it last week. Yeah, no, they killed it before he was even out of the gate. And, you know, yeah, people like, well, Trump and don't, listen, we've been, the movie business shot because we've been taken to repetitive. I went to the movies every Friday, just like you did growing up, T.J. Every Saturday, we went to the fucking movie. Yeah.

You either went to what came out or two for three dollars. Drive-ins. Remember driving? Yeah, drive-ins and Clifton, whatever. We've taken that out. But at the same time, the mobster shit, Italian-wise, it's done. Now, mobland, the English. Because, like I tell you, there's gangsters and there's people who are dangerous,

but then there's Helen Mirren. God damn, that bitch is fucking good and everything she does. Did you see her last night? She had the fucking red, her toenails are painted, her hands. I have his theory, man. Every Latino male I know has a thing for her. Really? I don't think-Latinos have a thing for hell and mirror.

I don't want to fuck her or nothing like that. Well, you ever see her when she was in her prime? Oh, she was a piece of ass, yeah. But now she's old and she don't give a fuck. She's still kind of sexy. She's still very sexy. She had boots on last week on a miniskirt and a leopard shirt on. She's fucking 75 years old.

A leopard shirt. on fucking real. But beside that, that's, we're factuated with all those stories. If you go on Netflix, how many fucking Eskabar movies are there on a fucking Netflix? Jesus Christ, Netflix, by a different fucking,

no, it's funny. Paradise remained, and they're all got awful. They're like seven or eight of them. And they're all got awful. The only one that's good is Narcos and that even lost its fucking thing after a while. Every time you go on there, the Narco, now it's Aaron

fucking. what, Aaron, the guy who, Aaron Hernandez. How many movies are you going to get me out? Oh, Hernandez, yeah. He got punched in the head, and he fucking shot eight people. What do you want from me? That's what happens, you know? It's like Bryce Mitchell.

Did you watch that fight the other end? He got knocked out again. Listen, I always say Christianity and punches to the head. They just don't mix. Jesus got punched in the head, and he left three days later. He's like, I don't need this shit. It don't work. But it's funny how, you know,

This cocaine thing, like, listen, I was very... I love all this shit. I love all these books. You know I love all this stuff. Because I grew up in it. I saw it. I saw point A and I saw point B. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I saw everybody spending $2 for a hit of acid. And two years later, everybody was spending $50 for half gram of coma. That's a big fucking upswing. Yeah. People were spending nickelbacks. It was $5. for three joints and a little manila envelope all over the city.

And now the needle just moved to 50 fucking bucks for half a gram. You know, I was telling somebody, I remember living here up to 83, and we would go out and buy a half a gram between three of us. When it ended, you went home. You went home. When I came back 18 months later,

people were leaving on Fridays and coming home on Sunday. Or Monday morning. Like it had just blown up. Yeah. I saw what happened with weed in California, what happened here with Coke. Well, you're Cuban, so you were in the main vein of the Cuban culture, the selling of it, the using of it.

You know, you had that Cuban connection that cocaine was like, these guys who I was talking to were in Los Mucacchos, and I interviewed a bunch of other ones other than just Willie. They were from that generation. Cuban exiles, Miami, and they just hit the cocaine business, and they just took over that shit. They turned a little Havana into like where all their safe houses were, where you could stash shit, nobody was going to talk about it, and you could get away. The whole culture became part of the cocaine business to an extent.

So you were in the middle of it. So I made saint. I did Obatalan, 1969. And there was a gay Santero that used to hang out there. You always break people's balls. And one night he said something to me, and I said something to him. I said, oh, halaketamuera. In my house, you can't say oh, how la.

That means I hope. Yeah. I said something like, I hope you fucking died, motherfucker. And they came and grabbed me by my head, my mom, and she was like, you can't say that. About three weeks later, this motherfucker died. Oh, shit. All right. The Gay Santero died?

Yeah, he died from something. And I'll never forget, we had to go up there with my godmother. My godmother took me up there. I'll never forget this story. We're on the streets. And when a Santa Ria person dies, they can't bring them home. You have to do a thing there. While the cops are standing there,

they have to do a fucking thing. They cannot be brought to the funeral problem. You got to take the saint out of their head. So while they were taking the saint out of their head, I remember my godmother going, there's going to be tough. was talking to my mother and another lady in a car. The guy had a kilo under his bed

while they were doing the fucking thing and somebody had a golf fan sneak out with the kilo from under the bed. I still remember being a kid. See, I told you. What the fuck are they talking about? Your dissent... And that was 19...

Let's say it was 1971. And I still remember being a kid and telling my mom, mom, clean your fucking nose. Like, how was your fucking kid, guys? Eight, nine, and going, clean your fucking nose. Please, my friends are here.

You know. Do you think it's like as prevalent as weed is now? What's that? Coke? Well, like when I was eight, nine, ten. Like, I knew that my mother's bar, people did it. And I knew that they did stupid shit with it. They weren't smoking it or anything like that.

They were just, I still remember getting up in the mornings, like in eighth grade, seventh grade, and going to school. And they'd be in my living room with a huge aluminum foil open. And they wouldn't grind the coke in those days. There was no grinding. You just put the rocks in your house. Oh shit. And they would just sit there.

And I'd go to school and eat my Cheerios while they're snort and Coke. And they all felt guilty so they were all giving me money. Hey, what are you going to have for lunch? Here's 50 bucks. I would leave for like $200 every time they were all with snort and Coke.

And my mother used to tell them, don't give them cash. And I go, no, no, no, no. Come back tomorrow. You can do whatever you want, my fucking house. No, doing Coke that way is what burns a hole in your nose. Well, they didn't know. It was 1974. Right.

1975 and then there was a guy that used to come to my house that in the mornings I would hear my mother and stepfather and everybody else talking about him they had to throw him out all the time because he used to get paranoid his name was Muneko he had an eye that when he did coke it staggered and shit right so when I was a kid I liked him a lot Muneko he had two sons I liked him a lot when I was a kid and something happened at the bar I did something. I stuck up for him. And he called my mother and he goes, I'll call, I'm going to take him to Macy's tonight with his son. I was still living on 88th Street, so I had to be under 10. I'll never forget that he came over and he took me to Macy's. And he goes, buy whatever you want. And I bought like the Hot Wheel Carry case and like the mongoose. Remember that one thing? Yeah. And I brought it home. And when we got him walking the door, he looked at my mother. My mother goes, is that all he got? And he goes, that's all he wanted. And my mother looked at me and he

goes, and the guy took a fucking six inches of cash out. He goes, I brought this. He didn't want to spend any of it. When I saw that, I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's go back. I want to get some skis. Because I just saw the James Bond movie on skis and shit. I spent like $21. The guy had like $10,000 to spend on me because I said something and covered for his wife,

like somebody was going to get in trouble, but I said I hadn't seen him. And they were like, he's smart, he's a good boy, he didn't lie. He fucking stuck up for us. So then my mother dies. I don't see this guy, but he was tight. Before my mother died, they killed his son. He was doing heroin with somebody up in the, just around here, somewhere up in Fort Lee,

up, bad money, a white girl. And after my mother died, I'm eating on 43rd in Bergen, and there's some guy comes in, he goes, aren't you friends with Munezka? I'm like, yeah, where is he? He wants you to call him. I've been looking for months for you. He's in Florida.

So I call him, he sends me a plane ticket, and I go down to like two days later. First night, he's all coked up. He's like, I sent for you. Because I want your Italian friends to kill that family. Because he knew that I lived with the Balzano's, and he shot a guy eight times in the back. He goes, see if you go over there and fucking have him killed.

And I'm like, let's do some coke. Right? I'm sitting, and so he brings me back to his house. He's got a wife, and two, the one kid died, and the other kid, way older than me. I got to be 18, 19. And this guy comes in the room. You ready for this?

He would do Coke. Like, he would disappear and then come back with white underwear, a white t-shirt, VNAC, a Chinese t-shirt with the things, with the gold chain, with chancelotas and his feet out. But he would get a big margarine tub. This is unheard of. He'd get the biggest margin tub. Is this the gay Santero still?

No, no, no. The gay Santero is dead and buries. This is like an uncle to me. He would get, fill it with water and then put a dish in. So the dish would float in the water. And then he would put coke on it. So if the cops came, he would just dump the coke in the water. I mean, that's a complete different set of paranoia.

He had bars on his window already, the whole fucking thing. So now we're doing coke. I'm sneaking little coke lines. And he's just rattling off. And his eye is looking all over the place. But he would carry the, the twos and the twosking. or the 32 or the 32 in his waistline. And do you know at 5 in the morning, dog,

he goes outside to look out the window and the gun slips and he shoots himself in the fucking foot. And his wife comes running in, the son, he's on the floor. And they're like, I'm like, call the ambulance, call. He's like, don't call nobody. And his wife go, he shot himself last month too. And I looked at his feet. He had like three little bullet holes in his fucking feet.

Every time the gun fell, he'd go off and shoot himself in the fucking, Jesus. Like that was 84. And by that time the cat was out of the bag, but all these stories that were reading about now. That's a good one. Have you ever told that story before? I think so. I think so.

I think fucking so. That was a wild night with that month. It was a Monday morning. And the music at the time was Chekker Khan. And give me a higher love. It was August or September of 84. That summer. Yeah, yeah.

Those songs really place it in time, right? Yeah, check a con. Check a con. I feel for you. That's that one, I think. What's on? I feel for you. That was that song.

That's a good one. That's a good one, yeah. She still looks good, man. I'm on her social media. She looks really good. I was just listening to her day. The first, I listened to Sweet Thing when she was still with Rufus.

That motherfucker played a guitar because nobody plays a guitar. She was a cutie back then. He was what? She was a cutie. She was hot, man. She was adorable. That was 76. That was my son.

She was like in the 20s. I would love you anyway. Even if you cannot stay. She had a big, she had the big fro. She was hot. Hot. Yes, yes.

But all these books now and all these series, it's just like this drug thing, we were fucked. We were fucked as Americans. Like, they fucked us. And I, Listen, I had a great time doing coke for 28 years. I'm not going to sit here and be Johnny Hippocrat, but we got fucked.

You know, because you read about all these different organizations and stuff. Everything was great until about the 80 or 81. And then the government got involved, and that's when everything fucked up. Well, that's the war on drugs. It was no war on drugs. It was a silent war on drugs. We want to make a piece of it, too. That's why they went and went down there from Got Noriega.

They never gave a fuck about Noriega. They were talking about the Panama to now. They wanted what Noriega wanted. They wanted their 15%, dog. Just the way it is. And that's what they always fucking do. That's what they always do. And that's when it blew out of proportion.

And, you know, you watch all these documentaries, cocaine cowboys, this and that, this and that. How many of these guys were there? Think about how many of these guys were there. In the cocaine business? Everybody got into the cocaine. business after a while. Yeah, well, there were many layers to it. There was layers. And there were morons? Yeah. Morons that were making a lot of money because I used to rob those morons.

They didn't know what they, they didn't know. They didn't know. I'm going to tell you an interesting one. I got a lot. Before I got locked up, there was a family called the Markleys in Long, Colorado. This is 86. I got locked up in 87. By the time I got locked up, they were already in county waiting for sentencing. I didn't know this story. It was what I read. It was a father and son landscape in business. And one day they bought a fucking ounce of Coke and started selling it.

And the thing took off. The thing took off. Like they couldn't even, and they were so stupid. They were rednecks. They didn't know how to launder the money, so they just kept buying landscape trucks. They had every fucking truck that you could buy. These people were making serious fucking money.

And when they got bought, The cops busted them and sat there the whole night and sold Coke just to double check the amount that they were fucking making on the weekends. Plus they were wholesaling kilos, the whole fucking thing. I get locked up and I meet the little more clearly. And we're talking one day. And I'm like, what the fuck were you motherfucking rednecks doing up in a long money? Right, man. We started with an ounce.

And then we're picking up five kilos every other week. I mean, these guys got huge. But they're two idiots. The feds, you know all the feds? When Markley, young Markley, lived with his wife downstairs, and she was pregnant. After they got arrested, they found out that the father knocked her up.

When they were doing coke together, they were rednecks dog. They were white trash motherfuckers. Wait, they were doing coke together. The mother and the father. Okay. So the young Markley, who was married, who I was doing time with,

they got divorced during sentencing, and she went with the father. I mean, this is just cocaine shit, man. This is just, I heard all these fucking stories. And that's how they got them to plea bargain. That's how she ended up ratting on the both of them and fucking, because he was fucking the both of them. Just crazy shit.

It was a crazy time in America. When cocaine, you know this, when cocaine hit, let's say early 80s, this period you're talking about, it hit like a fucking tidal wave. Like a tidal way. And it hit everywhere in the U.S. This was Willie and Sal. They were bringing it to these different places. They were selling more coke than anybody in L.A.

by the mid-80s. And it just hit everybody. People, you know, the early media about cocaine was mostly positive. It was on the cover of Time magazine, a Newsweek magazine. And they were like, everybody's doing it. All different class levels are doing it. You don't get a hangover. there's no hangover

and all the so the PR on Coke was very positive up until crack to crack crack crack kind of tarnished

kind of tarnished the image a little bit so if you were a Coke dealer you had blood on your hands by the you know the Coke by the crack era but yeah it was it hit like a

phenomenon we all know it from the clubs the way it took over in nightclubs. I mean, come on. But what always got me was up in New York, and I'm sure this is true. Actually, I saw it in Cleveland and some other places. Cocaine had hit the working class. You go to the local Barney Stone after work on a Friday, and all those working class people were doing Coke. They made it affordable. This is one of the things Willie and Sal did. They brought in a lot a product so that they could bring the price down. The price came down suddenly, and they got it to the middle class and the working class.

What they did was they did something that nobody planned on. They got the biggest form of free advertising that they ever was. If anybody ever did it, it was cocaine. Because in the early 80s, when somebody went to the bathroom, they came out and they went to their drink and you heard, that was it. And people would come up right up to you. Are you doing Coke, man? Is it cool?

Do you really see things? Do you hear the, you know, they'd ask you creepy questions. Then it just took one thing. You want to do a line of Coke? Yeah, sure, let's try it. And boom, they were hooked because... How could you say no to it?

Yeah, because you believe that it brought you into a different class. You're at a club. By you doing it, like a chick? Chick lives in the projects of North Bergen. You got her in the city doing coke, drinking Don Parignon. She's sucking your dick,

because nobody's ever made a feel that way. All of a sudden, And there was no VIP in those days. But think about it. That was the VIP room. If you coming out of bathroom, oh, my God, I'm doing all that shit. And that's... What do you think changed?

Like, why do you... Because that... I mean, I've seen cocaine out, but I've never... Like, it wasn't... I don't think it's like that anymore. I don't think that's the type of drug... It's out there. Oh, it's definitely out there.

But I don't think it's like a status... Not like that. Not like it was. No, we're talking about... Now it seems dirtier. Now it seems like people like... To me, who... who's never done it.

Look, somebody, it's like people. I don't gamble. I always win. You ever meet those people? Every time I go to Vegas. Yeah, they usually... I clean up. Well, Vegas don't get bigger and bigger.

Those are the people who do a lot of cocaine. Yeah. If you're winning it, everybody I know wins, how the fuck is Vegas keep getting bigger and bigger? These cartels have all the money in the fucking world. When, in their 80s, when they were doing all, didn't these motherfuckuck up make Forbes magazines early on? to Escobar's, that dude was making what,

six million a day. Escobar. Are you fucking kidding me? So, you know, it was, I remember it feeling like if you did Coke, you were a little better person. Celebrities are doing Coke. Rock stars are doing Coke. Athletes were doing Coke.

And if you, I'm telling you, I grew up in northern New Jersey, Blue Collarville. And when somebody went and came out of a bathroom, it was like fucking all how, break loose. Well, you had a better chance of getting late if the ladies heard that sniff them too because they loved the coat. They fucking loved it. During that period. Yeah, yeah, no, it was, and I wasn't even that into coat, really. I was. I loved it for day one. Loved it. I didn't get high for like the first year on it, and I thought they were playing a trick on it.

But you know, but you know, the whole, sorry to interrupt, but the whole world can be divided into two groups. The groups are when they laid out that line of cocaine at a party club for the first time and said, you want to try some. There's the people who said no, and there's the people who said yes to that. And there are two very different kinds of people, right? Totally different kinds of people. I personally would rather spend time with the people who did the line of Coke than the people who didn't do the line of Coke. The ones who didn't do the line of Coke are ones that just probably...

became boring. They lived a boring life. You know, when my mom sold the bar in 78, she had some money. She invested in the fucking jewelry store in the city. But she was buying more jewelry than she was selling. And then she would go to the fucking,

the Yonkers raceway, and they were fucking, you know, she was losing the money gambling. So my last year, with her, she started holding drugs downstairs in the basement for people. And for a few weeks there'd be weed downstairs

in those yellow Colombian bags, but it was the worst weed in the world. Whoever grew it, crushed the seeds and put the seeds back in it. So it means every time you spark and it blows up, it blows up. You couldn't even smoke a joint. Ba, paw, you gotta keep lightning.

And then I never heard of that. And then I went downstairs one day. and I found a big bag of Coke. I'm talking a big bag of Coke. And I would look at it and I would ask around. And then one day I stole some, like just a little taste and I gave it to a friend of mine. I go, you're a good guy.

You like doing Coke, take this. And he's like, where did you get this from? So I took some. And one day, a week before my mother died, one day we went to Hudson County Park. We robbed beer from Albertsons. And we went to my buddy's house. And while we were down there,

Everybody was in the basement, and him and I were upstairs, and I got to tell you something. I got some fucking Coke. And he's like, we were 16. He's like, come on. So we were drinking vodka with peppermint shnapps. And we would crush the ice on top.

You're 16? 16. And we put it in a freezer for it to get hard. And then when it came out, that's how we did it. We sprinkled the coke on there first, like, and we called them like snowballs. We weren't back down. And we're talking to these kids who were not doing drugs.

And we're like, we're drinking snowball. And they're like, Let's know, they didn't even know. And then finally we went upstairs and did a line of Coke and we were like, don't say this to nobody. We did that Coke. I don't remember getting, I didn't get high until maybe. You guys were little hoodlums, right? And then we used to bring it.

You were like Jimmy Cagney and. Dog, my sophomore and junior year, we used to bring it to school. There was a football player that sold Grams at school. And we would bring them into the classrooms and pass the package back and forth. during the class and do little bumps. And kids were looking at us like we were fucking Martians, man. That's hilarious. I guess you were destined to do Coke, you know?

You just got there way faster than most people. I'll tell you the funniest story of us. In the sixth grade, I'm dating this Cuban girl in New Yorker of a reason. And my man and your man thought he comes over. And he comes over because I fucking hated Nina, but he comes by himself. And he was like a broad Cuban guy, thin, like that dude probably had a big dick. Because he was like 6'1, 180, but he had big hands and big feet, and he was thin and hard.

Sounds like a big dick. All right. So one day he comes over and he's like, your mother tells me you're dating some girl. Like my mother went to him to give me, like, advice and talk to me. Not him. I mean, you got to think, this guy used to take me to a barbershop. On the way back, those little apartments on Boulevard East by the 6th. Right there.

They've been there forever. We would go in there, and that was one of his places where he weighed coke, but there were two girls that were always naked, and they'd be eating each other out, and he'd go, let's watch for a little while. I'm in a six fucking gray with this guy. You know, this is Tati, dog. He knows, he knows the legend of Tati.

So one night, he's like, you're eating a pussy yet? I'm like, no, I'm not doing anything. I barely kiss her. And he's like, there's what you do. And he fucking went in his jacket. pocket and he took fucking something out and he went and he had a capsule and he emptied it like a like a fucking contact you know contact remember for 16 hour cold relief he had like a contact

and he emptied it and he filled it up with coke and he gave it to me goes next time that girl comes over you put that on a pussy and I'm like what I didn't even know what he was talking about he said got to eat a pussy and all this shit and I'm like I didn't tell nothing to nobody for fucking like five months wow and then one night my mother came on with steam and her She goes, get fucking down here. She goes, Doc, he gave you fucking Coke. And you, where is it? She goes, in my drawer.

She's like, go get it and give it to Mommy. I can hear her on the phone. How dare you give him coke? He's 12 fucking years old. What were you thinking? And he's on the other line. But trust me, he's going to put it on a pussy. You know, La Papaya.

You know how they talk. So I want to La Papaya. Like those old school revolutionary kids. Dobby gave me a fucking capsule filled with cocaine. So that's what I grew up with. So at first I would look at them and go, I'm never going to do that. I'll smoke dope,

but I ain't putting nothing in my nose. And then I discovered T.C. Crystal, gorilla biscuits, aka a fucking parrot twankleizes. And then cocaine came along, like six months after that. And I swore I wouldn't do it. And I was like, fucking hooked. And that was it after that.

From 1979 to 2007, I was fucking hooked. It was a hard thing to not do because it was around. It was everywhere. You know, you go to a party at somebody's house, it's definitely going to be there. Go to a club, it's definitely going to be there. Going to a woman's bathroom, it's there. Going to men's bathroom.

It's kind of everywhere. They might be a line at the party to like some, the Coke was there, and there'd be like a line to, But it was crazy because if you went to New York in the 80s, you could put an ounce on the table and snort it. People were doing at restaurants, clubs. But then I went out in the city of 93,

and I took a package out. They almost fucking called 911 on me. Yeah. They threw me out. They were like, we don't do that here no more. I'm like, this is New York City. They're like, we don't. Yeah, no, that era passed.

Sorry, it changed completely. Like, what about, like, the history of, like, cocaine and comedy? Because I was thinking, like, comedy, might have been one of the worst places for you to go like cocaine-wise. Like, it must be out every night. That's a book somebody should write. Yeah, I was just thinking that's a cool.

That's a book somebody should write, the history of cocaine and comedy. Well, again, that was my favorite fucking comic, Richard Price. When he lit himself up on fire. You should write that book. What's that? Cocaine and Comedy.

The history of cocaine and comedy. You got another book in you? I was just talking to the guy the other day. Because, like, yeah, everyone did it. That seemed like it. I mean, you're up. Freddie Prince. Oh, yeah.

All those debts. Prior. Prior. You know, all those fucking great. Those guys got hooked. Marvin Gay was fucked up. Oh, yeah. Marvin Gay was fucked up.

A lot of those guys, my favorite, Hollywood Henderson, was fucked up. Fucked up, you know. And that's why cocaine was easy because athletes were doing it. You know, the only person that broke my heart when I found that he did coke, there was only one person that I was in shock. And that's Joe Montana. Oh. When I found out Joe Montana did Coke,

I was fucking pissed off like a motherfucker. Why? Because he was like my hero. You know, I didn't want my heroes. You put him on a pedestal. Yeah, I didn't think Joe Montana did Coke. And I heard horrible fucking stories. Yeah, a lot of athletes of that era,

football players were doing Coke, basketball players, I'm sure. Baseball players, remember when the whole big scandal with the whole New York Mets in the 80s? That's right. Keith Hernandez. That's right. They were all.

Coke heads. Fucking the Phoenix sons with Gondra's ex-younger brother. There is there doing Coke in the dugout. They'd make jokes about how they were going to run out and sniff up the foul line on the field. Like it was a line of Coke. The fucking San Diego Chargers had a problem that even Fred Dean left

and called him a bunch of free bakers when he went to the Niners. Yeah, it was real, man. And you know, listen, we were sold a bill of rights that it didn't do anything for you. When I found myself in prison for kidnapping, I was like they were fucking wrong. Okay, they didn't really know.

They didn't really know the effects of cocaine. They didn't know the effects of long-term cocaine usage. They just didn't know the effects of long-term cocaine usage with alcohol and the imagination. Yeah. because cocaine in the imagination, life and imagination, imagination sometimes gets you in trouble without you even knowing it. You know, you don't even know it's imagination.

I just had something six months ago where I'm like, what made me do something like this? It was imagination. Something that I thought would happen from a TV show I watched or something. It's just horrible. So are you saying when you, like when Coke first came out, you didn't think it was bad for you? It wasn't told.

wasn't built like that. It was something that you did it, made you drink, no hangovers. You're going to go home and fine. Yeah, there were no case studies of long-term users, because there hadn't been any at that point. Fuck, I never thought. I just thought he knew it was bad, but it was fun. No.

I mean, the other night something was on. That was very interesting. I told the Time Magazine said, you know, there were no bad consequences from it. Oh, shit. In 1987, something happened in this country. That was really weird. And I was just coming home, and it was the death.

of Lenny Byes. That was very controversial death in my world because I was about 20-something at the time. He got drafted and he died the next day. That night at a party. He said he never did it before. So if he had never done it before, this is his first time. Well, he died and they went after left the dry the butt. The moral of that story was, this is how crazy that is, I was here. I had just flown in for something. here and I was in the city and I went to get Coke or weed and somebody goes we got the bias.

I'm like, what? I didn't even know what he was saying. I thought he asked me that Lenny Byers died. He goes, nah, we got what killed Lenny Byers and I was like, you cold-blooded motherfuckers, you know? But it was so, cocaine was such a bad, like that's wild about the drug world, right? There's that, I don't want to call it evil, but there's a certain level of that business where, like, if they hear there's a certain Coke that's taking people out, they want it.

Everyone. There's a very self-destructive tendency, you know, to use that shit. And, yeah, if that takes over, we're all in bad shape. You know, I once saw something that said cocaine was a curse from the Inca's to destroy white men. It's possible. They used it. And after what I saw, what I've seen,

what it made me do, yeah, yeah. There's something to that. There's something, and it comes from the natural. But the shit they put in there, once you find out what they actually put in there, it's a plant. You're like, you know, no wonder I had t-shirts

that had, this was brown, white T-shirts that you would put chlorine on, but the sweat was brown. God knows what was in there. You see them when they're putting gas and acetine, fucking, you know, maluga juice, and, you know, it was just so many fucking things. And that's why I'm pissed sometimes. When I go back into the 80s and the late 70s of cocaine, it was like they were fighting a war that they were helped supplying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what got to me. Yeah. That's the corruption of the whole. thing. That's what really pissed me off. And listen, like right now, I feel at times like one of those

people that sues Marlboro for getting cancer, you know, me talking this way, like going, I'm pissed about what they did. But I was that week and I let it in. Yeah. Can't be mad at Marlboro. You know what saying? You can't be mad at the Colombians. And you can't be mad at... No, it's a plant. When I was in, when I was in Peru, I did coca leaves every day. And he felt like a million bucks. It was clean. Well, first of all, it's because of the altitude. It keeps you from getting altitude sickness.

And so you have just a little water, coca leaves in your mouth. And I liked it. It was kind of like water, tobacco. I've never done that. But so I was doing it every day. And the hotel where I was staying, they had like a bowl of coca leaves when you come into the hotel. You could just help yourself to it.

There was always tea that was made out of the coquillies that was there for you to have. Did you feel yourself getting addicted to it? No, hell no. But you'd get a little buzz. It was like coffee. It was very much like coffee. It gave you a little caffeine buzz. And I used it one time when I was going up to see a shaman, a woman.

All I knew is this woman was elderly, and she was in this village outside of Lima. and we could go see her and, you know, have a session with her. And I said, yeah, that sounds great. We had to take a bus to get there. And then when we got off the bus, we had to go up a hill into a very remote part of this little village. And then we get up there and one house out in the middle of nowhere

and there's a line there. There's a line of people waiting to get in to see this curandera. and so I'm in the line and finally get in to see this old lady and she's like she's about 95 she speaks at a local dialect not Spanish so there was a translator there

and I sit down in front of her and she says okay you got to take a bunch of coca leaves and put them in your mouth and by then I had been using coca leaves almost every day while I was there. So I was like, great, no problem. Boom, put it in there. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm vibing on it, you know.

I'm getting the juices from it and everything. And she's looking at me. She's looking at me. Then she turns the translator. She says, is he married? She, she was turned on. I think she was turned on by the fact that I was taking to the leaves with, you know, with great gusto. So she liked that.

She's turned on by that. She thought that was great. So it's like a bonding thing. The coca leaves. It's a ritual from long ago, just like Coke, you know, cocaine. But that's a more natural way, and that's more of a spiritual way.

Yes. Once you had gasoline and shoot people, fucking, you know, everything else and whatever else they add to it. Well, that's man. That's man. That's what man does, right? Right? Man turns it into a dirty little business.

Cocksucker. What are we going to do about that, Chilly? Pisses me off, T.J. Everything pisses me up. That's what happens when you get old. You have no teeth. You have a fucking, you have a fucking hernia now. Hey, you're doing good, man.

You're still sitting here telling great stories, able to enjoy good stories. That's it. It's okay. Okay, it's been okay, man. You know, I'd rather be in the hospital and six feet under, so we're here, we're slinging dick.

We're going to Austin this week. We've got two sold-out shows. No shit. We're eating some Terry blacks. You're going to do Rogan when you're there? Thursday. Wow. Thursday, Friday, go get some stem cell on my dick.

My fucking, I'm going to get some shot here. Really? I don't know. I usually go for a shot at my knee, and maybe... There is. You do get to a stage... I guess, men get to a stage where you have to start shooting your dick with something. Not me. I'm not putting anything in my dick.

You know? Yeah. That's a different world, but they will invent something. No, no, that's already happening. I have this, that guy was telling you about in Boston, a gangster friend of mine, he had some, and he'd got it on the black market for another gangster, and he took me one day. He said, I got to take this over this guy, this injectable. both fluid with the needle that they inject into their dicks because they were, they were both

probably pushing 70 around that time or into their 70s, well into their 70s, yeah. And so they were having to inject their dick. So he's going over to see this guy to give him some of this liquid. And they're making a deal. He's paying him for it. He got it on the black market. And so they leave me in the car. I'm sitting in the car. And they're like standing in the street right in front of the car and I'm watching this transaction. And the one guy who I didn't come with, he comes over the car and he taps on the window. And I roll it down.

He says, hey, you're the writer, right? Yeah, he says, you're writing a book? I said, writing a book. No, not at the moment, not writing a book. Because he says, you're not putting this in a book, right? He didn't want me putting in the book to these guys, you know, having to do a black market deal to buy stuff to inject into their dick

so they had any action at all. And they tell me, the older guys, the older fellas tell me that that's one of the next stages. You're probably not there yet. I'm not quite there yet. But that's what we have to look forward to.

And what is the gel doing your dick? I don't think it's a gel. Well, I don't know. No, I think it's just something that stimulates your blood, I guess. You go to China. You buy those fucking lizard balls.

This episode is also brought to you by Bluetooth. I remember I was in Hong Kong once and you go to one of those little place where they sell all that shit and the variety of stuff they have in like a Chinese pharmacy. All those ancient herbs and shit they have. They're all for the dick. A lot of them are for the dick. But they shoot themselves

in the dick. The black stuff. That black car that you eat, that breaks. That's for your dick. You have to go to a Chinese pharmacist. They say you can't turn that shit back. That's good dick. That's like Okinawa dick. You just keep giving it. It's a dick that keeps coming. You know what I'm saying? TJ, always a pleasure to have you, brother. My pleasure, man. Thank you for leaving the book. Thank you for being.

Yes, sir. Thank you for being my inspiration. I love reading your stuff and hopefully one day I'll grow up to be like you. So for the audio listeners, TJ, what's the name of the new book? New book's called The Last Kilo. There's a subtitle. I don't even remember it anymore. But yeah, it came out as a hardcover book a few months ago and it's out there. You can get it anywhere. You can buy a book. Yeah. Thank you, brother. Thank you. And that's it. We got Austin, Texas. Lee, what do you got? The 19th Saturday. I'm with Steve Simone at the dojo.

Or the dojo of comedy. There he is right there. Fucking perfect on a Saturday night. What else you going on. You doing any shows at the fucking, you, T.J. You're doing any shows at the blue moon, whatever. The blue note. The blue note, whatever the fuck is. The blue note. Shit, the conversation is deteriorating rapidly all the sudden. That's what happens. It's just crumbling right before your eyes. I love you guys. See you next week. Stay black. I want to thank T.J.

I want to thank Lee, but most importantly, I want to thank you guys for always having a back. Have a great week, and we'll see you next week, I guess. What's happened, beautiful people? Uncle Joey here for Blue Chew. Listen, if a soft sausage is holding you back from meeting the love of your life, Blue Chew has what you need. They send chewable tablets right to your fucking front door that are going to make you a beast in the bedroom. Just head over to their website, talk to one of our licensed medical providers,

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